The present invention relates to a data recording camera capable of photographing an object image frame by frame of film and capable of recording sound data corresponding to the photographing.
In camera for photographing optical images on a usual silver halide film, there are ones capable of also recording related data such as sounds in connection with the photographed frames (for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 62-116932). In a camera disclosed in this Laid-Open Publication, a semiconductor memory is used for storing related data.
Further, there is a camera provided with an IC card as a recording medium in which photographing data are recorded (for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,728,978). In this camera, data used in photo laboratory are recorded in the IC card, and when they are recorded therein, a mark indicating completion of the data recording is imprinted in the film. However, this camera is not constituted to record sounds.
For recording sounds in a recording means, it is required much recording capacity. Therefore, the capacity of a memory attached to a film or film cartridge is insufficient. As a result, a memory for recording sounds is required independently. In this case, since the memory for recording sounds and a film are separate, it is sometimes difficult to recognize the photographed frames and the recorded sounds in accurate correspondence. And when the sounds are played back or copied in another medium, sometimes the sounds cannot correspond to the photographed frames respectively, thereby causing errors. In the above-mentioned Laid-Open Publication, nothing is disclosed relating to recording data for corresponding photographed frames to recorded sounds.
Taking of the capacity of a semiconductor memory, sounds relating to photographed frames of one film (the recording time being regarded as 10 sec. for each one frame) can be recorded in a semiconductor now used at most on the practical level. Therefore, in order to take a longer sound recording time, to optionally set the recording timing, and further to record sounds relating to a plurality of films, another sound recording memory is required than the above-mentioned semiconductor memory.
In this case, the sound recording memory is, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,728,978, in the form of a card, and it is attached to a camera in such a manner that it can be easily exchanged by another one. And it is preferable in respects of reliability and simplification of the structure that electrical contact points of the sound recording card of this type and the camera are as small as possible in number. To satisfy this necessity, it is preferable to use a serial communication for the data communication between the camera and the sound recording memory card. On the other hand, as a sound recording memory card of this type, a semiconductor memory is used and accordingly, it is necessary to convert sound signals to digital ones and code them in order to record sounds in the memory card. And for transmitting data from a camera to the memory card through a serial communication simultaneously with converting sound signals to digital ones and coding them, extremely complicate control has to be executed in respect of timing.
While, it is conventionally known that in a sound recording camera, timing of starting image recording and timing of starting sound recording are optionally shifted (it is disclosed in the Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 61-133780 and 61-253981). Though timing setting for sound recording to image recording is difficult, there is no proposition to display timing for sound recording. Only a few disclosure can be related. For example, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 61-257087, remaining time for sound recording is displayed, and in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 61-277281, lapse time for sound recording and lamp to be indicated "on recording" are displayed.
In this way, in conventionally, since the timing settings of sound recording and image recording are not displayed, the relation between these timings are hard to confirm and it is inconvenient.